Dead Hot spoilers won't be found in this review.
Success stories like Shelter and Fool Me Once are synonymous with author Harlan Coben, whose books served as the inspiration for each of these shows.
But did you know that his daughter, Charlotte Coben, also worked extensively on these projects in both a writing and producing capacity?
As Netflix moves forward with two more Coben adaptations, Missing You and Run Away, Charlotte has struck out on her own with a series that's very similar yet — plot twist! — also completely different to what you might expect from the Coben family name.
Prime Video's Dead Hot revolves around two friends, Elliot and Jess, who are bonded by Peter, Elliot's ex and Jess's twin, who suddenly disappeared five years prior. Peter left nothing behind except his severed finger in a pool of blood, but the pair still cling on to hope that he might still be alive.
Life has moved on, but they haven't, not really. Except, that all changes when a gorgeous man named Will suddenly enters Elliot's life.
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It all seems too good to be true, and sure enough, it is, because strange things then start happening which suggest someone is out to hurt Elliot, and his missing ex Peter might somehow be involved.
So far, so Coben™, but Dead Hot is not your dad's typical Coben show, not by any means.
While the likes of Shelter and Fool Me Once feel quite naturalistic, despite how wild those inevitable twists are, Dead Hot brings a very different aesthetic that's larger than life in just about every way possible.
There's nothing supernatural about Dead Hot, but the way it's shot and presented is hyper-stylised in comparison, with bright colours and exaggerated performances that pop with a camp, quirky flair that sets it apart from other thrillers of this ilk. And that's not all either.
Without spoiling too much, scenes where servants pretend to be horses or partygoers drink vodka out of a baby doll's skull let us know that the world of Dead Hot is not the world we live in. And that's before we even get to the breasted dolphin fetish costume.
But that's not to say Dead Hot is overly bizarre in ways that might put off casual viewers, and that's because Charlotte smartly grounds these odd, world-building moments with plenty of emotional realism, especially when it comes to the central friendship at hand.
Elliot and Jess are platonic soulmates, they're the emotional lynchpin of this story, but they're not without their faults – and that's to the show's credit because even soulmates can fight or sometimes get on each other's nerves. No matter how wild things get around them, their friendship is always 100% believable.
You'll want an Elliot and Jess in your life too, even if you don't always agree with them or even like what they do – which is also a credit to Bilal Hasna and Vivian Oparah, the actors who play them.
Hasna is hilariously dumb in Disney's Extraordinary and beautifully defiant in Layla, an upcoming Sundance film where he plays a drag queen, but it's here in Dead Hot that Bilal is at his absolute best. He's just as charming when Elliot's silly and self-deprecating as he is when Elliot's selfish or mopey.
It's the kind of breakout performance that will hopefully make the industry sit up and take more notice, just as they should have done when his co-star Vivian Oparah won us over in Rye Lane, a criminally overlooked romcom which might just be the best you'll see this decade.
Everything about Oparah that made us fall in love with her there is present and accounted for here in Dead Hot too. As the supportive best friend who's also grieving in her own quiet way, Vivian is just as natural as the twists in this show are not.
With all the endless surprises and offbeat scenarios thrown our way, Dead Hot wouldn't work half as well without Hasna and Oparah's effortless chemistry. Scenes where Elliot can't stop checking his phone after a date or when Jess struggles to hold back her resentment ground the madness around them and make us root for them both.
The other characters who populate this world aren't as well rounded, but that's a deliberate choice because it gives actors like Rosie Cavaliero (Funny Woman) and Downton Abbey's Penelope Wilton room to go completely unhinged in the best way possible.
A special shout-out to Marcus Hodson, most recently seen in the BBC's witchy drama Domino Day, who manages to make Will simultaneously the sweetest and most deranged potential boyfriend we've seen on screen in quite some time.
The show is even camper than this all suggests, which further sets Dead Hot apart from any Harlan Coben comparisons viewers might have been tempted to make. While his shows do include queer plot lines – as seen in Shelter and (Former Mr Gay UK) Dino Fetscher's casting in Fool Me Once – Charlotte has made queerness integral to the story here.
That's refreshing in any context, especially when the main queer relationships don't involve white people for a change, but it's even more special when you consider how rare it is to see gay love in anything outside of a tragedy or coming-of-age story. Queer people exist outside of these two spaces, it turns out, yet LGBTQ+ genre fare is still noticeably absent for the most part on screen.
Dead Hot bucks that trend with very specific queer experiences and even jokes that will resonate far more if you're one of the alphabet people. But even if you're not, the emotions involved are universal, as are the trademark Coben twists that will leave you gagged as per usual.
Unfortunately, some of Harlan's pacing issues occasionally come into play here as well, and things do get rather convoluted towards the end, but those are minor quibbles when the characters are this likeable and the surprises are this surprising.
You're not ready for episode four, especially, and you're not ready for the final answers to this mystery either, which is just as well because you'll definitely want to see more of Elliot and Jess after you're done with these six episodes, which are arguably far better than any of Netflix's recent Coben adaptations.
Dead Hot arrives on Prime Video on March 1, with all six episodes dropping at once.
After teaching in England and South Korea, David turned to writing in Germany, where he covered everything from superhero movies to the Berlin Film Festival.
In 2019, David moved to London to join Digital Spy, where he could indulge his love of comics, horror and LGBTQ+ storytelling as Deputy TV Editor, and later, as Acting TV Editor.
David has spoken on numerous LGBTQ+ panels to discuss queer representation and in 2020, he created the Rainbow Crew interview series, which celebrates LGBTQ+ talent on both sides of the camera via video content and longform reads.
Beyond that, David has interviewed all your faves, including Henry Cavill, Pedro Pascal, Olivia Colman, Patrick Stewart, Ncuti Gatwa, Jamie Dornan, Regina King, and more — not to mention countless Drag Race legends.
As a freelance entertainment journalist, David has bylines across a range of publications including Empire Online, Radio Times, INTO, Highsnobiety, Den of Geek, The Digital Fix and Sight & Sound.
